


if you’re looking for heaven (it sure as hell ain’t me)

by shineyma



Series: walk away [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s01e19 The Only Light in the Darkness, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 03:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4547913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Left behind with Grant while the others travel to Portland, Jemma isn't expecting much of anything. If she were, though, it certainly wouldn't be <em>this</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you’re looking for heaven (it sure as hell ain’t me)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the anonymous prompt, "Can I request a biospec soulmate AU with an age diff? Like Ward still 30 but Jemma 17-ish? Pleeeeease?"
> 
> I'm behind on comment replies, but I intend to tackle them just as soon as I post this, so...that's _almost_ like being caught up, right? Right?
> 
> Title is from The Script's _Walk Away_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

It’s been a very long week, so perhaps Jemma can excuse Grant for bee-lining to the bar the moment they set foot in Koenig’s office.

“Drink?” he offers, and she frowns at his back.

“Are you being funny?” she asks, honestly unsure.

She loves him dearly, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell, with him, what’s a joke and what’s not. His sense of humor is an odd mix of dry and awkward, and it makes for quite a bit of confusion.

“No,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at her. His brow is wrinkled slightly, and Jemma’s own forehead twinges a little in sympathy at the sight of the cut above his eyebrow. “Why?”

“Don’t you think alcohol is out of the question?” she asks.

He laughs under his breath, turning back to the bar.

“After the week we’ve had, I think we can let the drinking age slide,” he says, a little wryly.

Oh, of course. He’ll let her age _slide_ when it comes to alcohol, but not where it matters. After the week they’ve had, as he puts it, Jemma rather thinks they should leave drinking aside and investigate the possibilities sex offers, relief-of-tension-wise.

Failing that, she’ll accept a simple kiss.

It’s absurd and unfair; she’s known her soulmate for nearly eight months now and still hasn’t so much as kissed him. She understands and respects his concerns about their age difference—or, to be more precise, her own status as technically underage—but surely if she’s old enough to nearly die on a weekly basis, she’s old enough to kiss her bloody soulmate.

Still, she’ll admit they’ve made progress since their meeting. After all, he’s willing to be alone in a room with her, now. His insistence on a chaperone in the early days—for all that she knows Coulson would have insisted if Grant hadn’t—truly grated.

In any case, this isn’t the time to press the issue. After everything that’s happened, there’s a good chance that, if she does, she’ll be able to persuade him that sex is a good idea, and that’s not how she wants things to progress.

If only because she knows him well enough to know he’ll go running scared the moment they’re done.

So, instead of suggesting they let the age of majority slide as well, she says, “I don’t disagree, but drinking is still off the table.”

“And why’s that?” he asks. It appears he intends to ignore her, as he’s already fetched a tumbler.

“Because,” she says patiently, “you shouldn’t consume alcohol on top of those opioids I gave you.”

He pauses, hand hovering awkwardly over the decanter, and she sighs.

“You didn’t take them,” she more says than asks. “Did you.”

“Sorry,” he says, with an utterly unapologetic shrug. The fact that it’s accompanied by a wince makes it even more aggravating than it might otherwise be. “Right now, I think it’s better if I stay sharp.”

“And staying sharp means that painkillers are out of the question,” she says, settling into the corner of the couch, “but alcohol isn’t?”

“Just one glass, I promise,” he tells her, raising the tumbler at her in a silent toast. “Not even enough for a buzz.”

“Then what’s the point?” she wonders.

He laughs again, louder this time, and abandons the bar to sit next to her, leaving—as ever—a more than respectable distance between them.

“You drink like a teenager,” he says fondly, and she rolls her eyes.

“I _am_ a teenager,” she says. “As you have so frequently reminded me.”

Grant doesn’t precisely sigh, but he makes an odd sound in the back of his throat as though he’s stifling one. He leans forward to set his drink on the coffee table, then turns to face her fully.

“The age thing,” he says, using the particular slow tone that means he’s searching for words even as he speaks them. “You know that’s more about me than you, right?”

“Anything that’s about you is about me as well,” she reminds him. “That’s what being soulmates _means_.”

His lips quirk in one of his little half-smiles, but he doesn’t look happy. “I know. But this…”

He reaches for the hand she has resting on the cushion and takes it in both of his. The touch is completely platonic, but it brings heat to her cheeks anyway. He’s just so much _larger_ than she is, and she imagines she can feel all of his leashed strength behind his gentle hold. It’s likely more a function of her _knowledge_ of that strength than anything else, but regardless of the cause, the effect is the same.

It’s ridiculous to be so affected by something so small as her soulmate holding her hand—though in her defense, he’s always so reserved. They haven’t done much in the way of touching, even platonically.

“It’s not about me being older than you,” he says, sweeping his thumbs over her knuckles. “It’s just…you’re so young. I don’t wanna break you.”

She has to take a moment to absorb that, it’s so absurd.

“I’m not a _glass_ , Grant,” she says. “I’m a _person_.”

“People can break,” he says.

She hesitates. There’s something hiding behind his curiously flat tone, some eggshells she feels she’d do well not to tread on. The half-formed protest on her lips—certainly people can break, but they can’t be broken _accidentally_ , and Grant would never harm her on purpose—seems unwise.

“Trip told me what happened at the Hub,” he says after a moment, and she winces.

Oh, dear.

Perhaps she should have pursued the broken angle, after all.

“I—”

“You realize you got lucky there, right?” he asks, and she detects a touch of anger to the words, despite the even tone. “If Hand had really been HYDRA…”

She doesn’t need him to tell her that. She imagines that conversation in the nerve center will be a feature in her nightmares for weeks to come; she knows well how close she came to never walking out of there. For a moment there—for more than a moment, even—she honestly believed she was about to die.

“I know,” she says. “But I won’t apologize for it. Better dead than HYDRA.”

He flinches a little and turns away, releasing her hand to reach for his drink, and she watches in concern as he downs it in one swallow.

“Grant…”

“I admire your conviction,” he says, as she flounders, and sets his glass down heavily. “But for my sake, I wish you were a little less brave.”

She stares down at her hands, thinking of the sheer number of times they’ve been covered in his blood.

“I could say the same,” she murmurs.

“But you gotta know,” he says, shifting a little closer to her, “you wouldn’t be dead.” He reaches out and tips her chin up, gently forcing her to meet his eyes. “A brain like yours? HYDRA’d want you in a lab. And if you refused—”

“When,” she interrupts.

His smile is pained. “ _When_ you refused, you’d get a lot worse than death.”

She does know, actually. Of course she knows. There was a whole course on it at the Academy: what to expect when one has been captured by enemy agents, how to withstand torture, and the like. She’s always known the risk her intelligence puts her at, and she knew perfectly well that going into the field would increase that risk.

Somehow, though, the very graphic warnings and demonstrations the Academy gave her were less frightening than Grant’s simple statement. Perhaps it’s the atmosphere—the way the room’s dim lighting falls over his cheekbones, highlighting the cut she fears will scar. Or perhaps it’s his voice, low and apologetic where her instructor’s was gleefully ominous.

Perhaps it’s his expression. She can’t quantify it at all.

“What are you saying?” she asks. Absurdly, there are tears stinging at her eyes.

He draws a breath, as though about to speak, and then lets it out in a heavy sigh.

“Nothing,” he says, slumping back against the couch. “Nothing, I’m sorry. Ignore me. I just worry about you, that’s all.”

His expression is still unreadable, but there’s a sadness to it that draws her closer—and for once, he doesn’t move away. His eyes are fixed on the door, as though he’s just _waiting_ for an enemy to come through it.

“It’s not nothing,” she says. “That was most certainly _something_.” She lets her hand fall to his thigh, and a tiny part of her—the part that isn’t occupied with worrying about his stillness and his odd mood—delights in the way it tenses at her touch. “Tell me.”

His eyes meet hers, and there’s something dark in them that makes her shiver. “I…”

“You?” she prompts gently.

He opens and then closes his mouth, then scrubs a hand over it.

“Grant?” she asks, concerned, as his silence draws out. “What is it?”

He swears—viciously—under his breath, and then he’s kissing her, his large, warm hands cupping her jaw, and she forgets her worries.

It’s fiercer than she would have expected from Grant, especially for their first kiss, but it’s—amazing. She can taste the scotch he just drank, feels the scratch of his stubble. She slides her fingers over it, curious—she’s kissed people before, of course, but none of them were old enough to have proper stubble, not like Grant’s—and in response, he bites at her bottom lip—a sting that sends a jolt straight to her core.

One of his hands falls from her face to her shirt, slipping past her collar to rest against her soulmark, the beautiful spiral that’s been bright purple since the moment she met him, and it causes more than a _jolt_. Heat throbs low in her gut, a sharp spike of pleasure that draws an embarrassing whimper out of her.

At the sound, Grant breaks away like he’s been burned, surging to his feet and retreating from the couch.

“I, uh.” His voice is oddly—and attractively—hoarse, and he clears his throat, looking self-conscious. “I should—go check on that program of Skye’s. I’ll be back.”

He’s out the door before she can catch her breath to protest, and she sits back, smiling to herself as she presses her fingers to her lips. They feel swollen, though that might merely be her imagination.

It’s not a surprise that he’s run off. In fact, she’s always expected it to be his response to their first kiss. What she _wasn’t_ expecting was that he would initiate. It is, she thinks, a very good sign.

She’ll give him a few moments to recover before she chases after him. In the meantime, she might try to find Agent Koenig—she doesn’t know where he’s gone, but if Skye’s decryption program has finished (and she’s certain it must have, by now), he’ll want to see the results.

Since she’s alone, she allows herself a single, happy spin before she leaves the office. The world is in terrible shape, it’s true—SHIELD in shambles, HYDRA rising, extraterrestrial threats lingering at their door—but Jemma has a sweet and brave soulmate who not only loves her, but is apparently capable of kissing every thought right out of her head.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not much. But the giddiness rising in her chest feels like hope.

And they’re all sorely in need of that.


End file.
